Tears are sacred. They express sadness, convey joy, communicate needs, and relieve stress. The act of crying itself gives us more than just release. It can bring us clarity.
But we live in a time when the cries of the masses are not only underestimated, but actively ridiculed. Expressions of collective grief are dismissed as empty posturing, and emotional breakdowns are quickly turned into memes. The alienation and isolation of online life has made it nearly impossible to express shared grief.
That's why we need to bring back that person who brings us to tears.
Remember those who bring you to tears? An entire category of films dedicated to recruiting Hollywood's best talent to unashamedly make you laugh out loud? You might know them more as weepers, or maybe even sobs. And as a genre, they provided a beloved and widely accepted means for communal emotional catharsis in the theater, in the dark.
Throughout Hollywood history, there have been movies that made us cry. The movie was making the audience cry even before the voice came out. But prestige as his genre peaked in his 1970s and his 1980s, culminating with his Oscar-winning 1983 “Terms of Endearment.” For the best photos. (“Those who go to see this movie hoping for a light comic diversion should bring at least four handkerchiefs for the hospital scenes,'' wrote Janet Maslin of the Times.) ) The film featured several emotionally devastating moments, including the one she mentioned. Maslin depicts the final conversation between her mother, played by Debra Winger, and her school-age sons after she dies of cancer.
The heyday of Prestige Weepie brought screamers like “Kramer vs. Kramer,” a harrowing tale of divorced parents fighting over their son. “Ordinary People” depicts the emotional breakdown of a family in the wake of tragedy. “Field of Dreams” is the ultimate father's cry against baseball and middle age. And of course, “Beach,” a heartbreaking song about the death of a lifelong friend, became a chart-topping anthem. Even the era's blockbuster movies, like “ET” and “Top Gun,” had obligatory fist-pump moments. That means hooking up the pale ET to a heart monitor. Kill the Goose — designed to have the audience sobbing instantly. And we did.
After a decade of decline as summer blockbusters and franchise sequels crowd out the adult peeves, the golden age of classic tear-jerkers ended in 1997 with the genre's biggest hit, Titanic. I did. The film was his three-hour-plus Oscar-winning thrill ride with extravagant direction and groundbreaking special effects. But the most memorable scene remains the scene in which Kate Winslet's Rose bids farewell to Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack, floating in the wreckage of the ill-fated ship. The sobs that caused generations of moviegoers to shed tears on their shirt sleeves (or on the shoulders of people sitting next to them in the theater). It also helped Titanic become the biggest box office hit in history at the time.
People who bring you to tears can sometimes seem a bit manipulative or cartoonish in retrospect. Here is a dying woman saying goodbye to her young sons. This is her father running through the streets of New York, taking his injured child to the hospital. This is Bette Midler singing “Did you know you're my hero?” For a terminally ill friend! However, works that risked prestige and elicited tears had an essential cultural purpose. It was a rare cathartic ritual in which the audience could participate together. Those who have seen either of these movies may get emotional just remembering it, which is a testament to its lasting power.
Sobbing together is something we have forgotten how to do, and something we desperately need to rediscover. We need more opportunities to show each other's humanity in public. We need to learn how to reassure each other that we are all sensitive beings who are at risk of feeling more emotions than we can tolerate. We can all shout it out together right now, in real life, in real time.
As a genre, the upscale tearjerker seems to have fallen victim to both changing tastes and changing technology. Hollywood has become more sensitive to the blockbuster experience. In a sense, this can be attributed to “Titanic.” Producers focused on films that appealed to the “four quadrants” of viewers: men and women, young and old. Despite many of the genre's most famous examples winning awards or becoming blockbusters, the tear-jerkers have too often been dismissed as focusing on women.
Nowadays, tear-jerking movies mostly thrive on the fringes, whether it's Hallmark holiday specials, streaming teen movies, or the dark movies of the week. When modern high-end films explore personal tragedy, they tend toward low-key melancholy rather than melodrama. Movies like “The Holdovers'' and “Past Lives,'' released last year, or “Manchester by the Sea'' and “Call Me by Your Name,'' may make you sniffle. However, these are stories of restrained and quiet heartbreak, not large-scale tragedies like operas. A modern version of this tear-jerking film, in which the heroine carefully decides not to reunite with her past lover, and watches her one true love sink lifelessly into the icy ocean. do not have.
It's easy to see why audiences would be reluctant to go into a communal space to watch a slow, tragic story of human suffering. True grief is everywhere, but we are digesting it right now on our own, alone, on our phones, in silence.
Perhaps this is the real reason why people who shed tears with prestige have become extinct. We are now rapidly and constantly facing despair because we have learned to ignore our grief, push it out of sight, and ridicule it from others, no matter how sincere. We have forgotten how to collectively feel anything other than anger. We need look no further than the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 1 million Americans died in an experience that touched us all. However, there is still no permanent national coronavirus memorial. There is little recognition of the need for closure, let alone any movement to provide it.
Those who shed tears provided a shared space where we could feel those emotions together. Since the time of ancient Greece, dramatic tragedy has provided us with the necessary means of emotional purification. Aristotle argued that this catharsis helps turn the audience into more attuned, appreciative, and ethical citizens. Sigmund Freud saw unexpressed emotions as a threat to mental health. New research supports his view, showing that suppressing emotions increases stress, and crying releases oxytocin and endorphins. In her book Seeing Through Tears, Judith Kay Nelson writes that just as a baby's tears are an important means of communication with their caregivers, an adult's tears can attract support and foster connection. It claims to strengthen it. “Humans need behaviors that bring them closer to each other and stay there,” Dr. Nelson writes. “Crying is one of the most powerful and essential of those actions.”
Seeing others crying reminds us that we ourselves are worthy of compassion. When Dustin Hoffman's character in Kramer vs. Kramer rediscovers his own humanity as he anxiously waits in the emergency ward for news of stitches for his injured son, we too rediscover our humanity. Discover. Those who bring us to tears once provided us with such a space.
In Terms of Endearment, there's a scene in which Shirley MacLaine's character punches the nurses in a cancer ward, screaming that her daughter is in pain and someone needs to do something now. If this were a clip shared on social media today, she would be ridiculed as a well-deserved nightmare. But it works so well that it brings her to tears. We see people who are usually associated with perfectionism and self-control pushed beyond their limits to the point where they can't help themselves. It doesn't just make us want to cry, it's also proof of how completely out of control we are. Such control is not only impossible, but also undesirable.
I will revive those who bring tears to my eyes. Give us another reason to cry on each other's shoulders in public. Feeling the full force of our grief is a prerequisite for feeling the full force of our humanity: compassion, joy, joy.
This is what it feels like to be completely alive. we have to remember that. We need to remind each other.
Heather Havrileski writes the advice column Ask Polly and is the author of Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Wedding.
Illustrations by Brendan Conroy.
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